BUILDING ON STRENGTHS
It can sometimes be hard to write music, especially when you feel you are getting nowhere, and you experience a lot of rejection from the industry. The sad truth is, the music industry is one of the toughest, with an incredibly high failure rate—you are not alone, and, in fact, people like you make up over 90% of songwriters. Only the top few percent ever make a living at what they love, but this is no reason to quit. All of us can at least write a song that will get some air—whether it is by at least a local talent or performing it ourselves at a small gathering. If you want to be more, you have to risk time, effort, ego and often lots of money to get maximum exposure and potential success. There are no guarantees, no magic bullets, no overnight successes, just lots of work ahead and more potential rejection. Get used to it, learn from it, and use it to your advantage. This is a time to sit back, take stock of what you have done and find a silver lining in the storm of negative reactions you are experiencing. Get out those song evaluation forms, pull out the songs you have submitted, get out a few sheets of paper and let’s get to work on finding a direction towards which you can at least take a few tentative steps.
MARKETING
Going to song evaluations and pitches isn’t easy. Neither is playing your songs out to a live audience. You may hear only personal attacks, which you can ignore, the needless nitpicking of others, or a bunch of technical jargon that makes no sense to you at all. If you play your music live, you may get reviews from critics that sound like they didn’t hear your music at all, but were just angry about the fact it was hard to park before seeing your act. Get used to it. The important thing is to keep doing those events, and to get those evaluations—your music will never get heard if you keep it to yourself. Write down comments made and categorize them, and note who made them and any information you can find about that critic. Note how many times you hear the same critique, if you do, and from whom. Look for areas where you do get positive marks, and see if you can do more in those areas, since those are working for you at the moment.
